Abstract
A key functional effect of intranasal oxytocin with potential therapeutic relevance for autism-spectrum disorder is its reported facilitation of attention towards social stimuli, notably the eye region of faces. In the current randomized placebo-controlled within-subject experiment on 40 healthy males, we investigated the robustness of this facilitation of attention by intranasal oxytocin (24IU) towards social cues. Eye-tracking measures of preference for dynamic and static social vs. non-social stimuli were taken in four different paradigms where autistic individuals tend to exhibit reduced interest in social stimuli. Additionally, we investigated whether oxytocin increases attention towards the eyes relative to other salient face regions in an emotional face paradigm. Results showed that the time spent viewing both dynamic and static social vs. non-social stimuli was negatively associated with trait autism and significantly increased following intranasal oxytocin. For face stimuli, oxytocin primarily increased gaze towards the eyes of fearful expression faces but not for other face emotions. Overall, our findings demonstrate that oxytocin significantly shifts gaze preference towards social vs. non-social stimuli and to the eyes of fearful faces. Importantly, oxytocin appears generally to shift attention more towards salient social stimuli of particular relevance in the context of autism providing further support for its potential therapeutic use in autism-spectrum disorder.
Highlights
Autistic individuals across cultures tend to show reduced interest in both dynamic and static social vs. nonsocial stimuli using eye-tracking measures[1]
Our ability to recognize individuals and their facial expressions is of key importance for social behavior and interaction and autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with marked impairments in face-emotion recognition[4], as well as social anxiety, depression[5,6,7] and schizophrenia[8]
Previous eyetracking studies have demonstrated that facial emotion recognition relies on a triangular visual search pattern, including eye-gaze towards the eyes as well as nose and mouth regions, there is some degree of individual specificity[9]
Summary
Autistic individuals across cultures tend to show reduced interest in both dynamic and static social vs. nonsocial stimuli using eye-tracking measures[1]. Previous eyetracking studies have demonstrated that facial emotion recognition relies on a triangular visual search pattern, including eye-gaze towards the eyes as well as nose and mouth regions, there is some degree of individual specificity[9]. In ASD and many other psychiatric disorders, the patterns of visual scanning of faces are abnormal with the most notable difference tending to be reduced time scanning the eyes and other salient regions, Le et al Translational Psychiatry (2020)10:142 such as mouth and nose in comparison with other, less informative, face regions[1,10,11,12]. There is considerable interest in developing therapeutic approaches for normalizing eye-gaze patterns towards both social vs
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